Get Outside
By Rachel Werbel, Consultant, Green Spark Group
Get outside is our theme for Earth Month. It makes me think: what do we see reflected on screen?
As media makers, we have worlds at our fingertips and we have the ability to show the beauty, biodiversity, and geological diversity of our natural world in our work. Our stories have always had our home as a backdrop if not as an actual location then as a frame of reference for the viewer - how different or alike is that science fiction or fantasy world from the one we know?
Location: apartment in a city, house in a rural farm town, cabin in the woods - Planet Earth.
Shooting on location can be a joy. To engage in natural areas or to work outside in a city we love. We get to engage in these environments in a way not everyone does. We now know many ways and will continue to develop more ways to engage with our locations with the lightest footprint possible.
We also have a fantastic opportunity to show off our city’s most sustainable attributes whether that's one of the last grassland prairies in the world, a solar farm parking lot full of ev-chargers, or normalizing native garden front yards in suburbia. The idea of a white picket fence and monoculture lawn seems so distant. You may even have a tiny forest filled with native plants in your area. Or, you could rally your neighbors and community organizations and plant one, and use it in the backdrop of your next production, or document the process altogether. There are a lot of benefits to showing off the sustainable side of our communities from showing cool tech at work, creating habitats for pollinators, mitigating pollution and much more! The opportunities are there for the taking!
This month we are encouraging people to get outside and engage with their community, observe nature and the diversity that surrounds us. Smell the scents of the city and hike the trails. Experience your surroundings and pay attention to the details, this will make for better representation on screen and appreciation for why it is important to work hard to make content with as little harm as possible.
